Reading, Not Just For Beaches

Still Learning

In January 2017, I officially handed in my Master’s Thesis. As my thesis slipped out of my hands and into the eager hands of the secretary of the Graduate School at my college, I thought to myself: “Well, it looks like I’m done with learning.” Now about six months later, I find myself doing a completely different kind of learning then I’m use to. I have spent most of my youth learning from books and writing information out. Now, I am doing more of a “hands on” experience in material I had very little experience with before.

When I started Paperback Beaches, which was about 4 months after I handed in my thesis, I happily blogged away not caring about how my blog looked and solely focused on my writing. Then, I decided to promote my blog to gain a larger reader base. So, as I do with everything, I want to learn I Google searched how to’s on “how to get more readers to a blog.” One of the ways suggested was to use Twitter to market your blog. Since, I had a Twitter. I decided to put it to good use for once in my life. As I was checking out other bloggers blogs, I decided to revamp my look, step up my game so to speak. Yes, fellow book bloggers, I have been lurking on your blogs. I will admit I was a little jelly at your fabulous designs. Compared to everyone else’s my blog was woefully simple, so I decided to put my construction hat on and learn a new set of skills.

I have to admit something, I do not have everything together with my blog. I never realized how much work or learning I would have to teach myself till I was waist deep in figuring out to edit the html of my current theme. Before embarking on this blogging journey, I had zero experience with web design. For three days, I used a lot of Google searching and tried my own brand of problem solving (having random Jimmy Neutron like brain blasts) where everything begins to make sense in my head (at least temporarily). I’m writing this article for all beginner bloggers who see all of these amazingly designed blogs and think everyone has it all together. I can’t say for the other bloggers out there, but I don’t have everything together. It’s ok not to have it all in the beginning. As long as you try to fix problems here and there and expand out of your comfort bubble once in a while, you’ll be fine.

At least once a day, I groan out loud when I notice an error on a post, even though I reread it 4-6 times. Recently, I reacted this way to my post “My Reading List for: August 2017.” While I was writing and formatted the pictures the same way as the article before it. Just a few days ago, I was rereading the article and noticed one picture is the right size and the second one was three times larger than the first one. This only one problem, I have had. Now, thankfully, it’s resolved. However, I do have a few other gadgets on my blog that I still don’t know how to configure or in the process of figuring them out.

1. How to make an info page using Blogger.

2.Trying to figure out how to configure the follow buttons on the template I downloaded.

3. Rewrite an article I accidentally erased, then somehow replaced with another article. So I have to still write it.